The papers of Joanne Kyger (1875-2018), an important member of the 'post-beat' West Coast poetry community. The papers document Kyger's life and writing as she traveled through San Francisco, Japan, New York, and Bolinas, California. The bulk of the collection covers the period from 1957 through 2017 and includes correspondence, poetry manuscripts and typescripts, journals, ephemera, photographs, and sound recordings. Also included is a series of Kyger and Lamont family history materials.
Joanne Kyger Papers, 1875-2018 (bulk 1960-2017) (MSS 730)
Restrictions: Original material too fragile to handle from boxes 35 and 47 has been restricted;
photocopies must be used instead. Original sound recordings are restricted; listening
copies may be available for researchers.
Extent: 74 Linear feet (165 archives boxes, 1 record carton, 6 shoe boxes, 8 flat boxes, 10 map case folders and 1 film), + approx. 28 GB of digital files
Joanne Elizabeth Kyger was a West Coast poet who emerged as the Beat movement was beginning to wane in the 1960s. The daughter of Jacob and Anne Kyger, she was born November 19, 1934. Her father's career as a navy officer led to a peripatetic early life: by the time she was fourteen she had lived in Vallejo, Ca. (where she was born), China, Washington, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Illinois. Her father retired in 1949, and the family settled permanently in Santa Barbara, California.
Kyger attended the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1952 to 1956, where she took classes with Hugh Kenner and Paul Wienphal, both of whom were important to the development of her poetry. She left the university one unit short of her degree, and the following year moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Kyger soon got a job working at Brentano's Bookstore in San Francisco's North Beach, and she usually spent her nights sharing poems with friends at poetry bars. In 1957 she met John Wieners at The Place, one of the poetry bars, and through him met Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer; it was also during this time that she first met Gary Snyder. Duncan and Spicer were the doyens of a group of poets who would gather on Sundays to read and discuss each other's work. Kyger said of those meetings: "They (Duncan and Spicer) would read what they had written, and everybody else would read what they had written. And you would be severely criticized. A lot of people would be so heavily criticized that they wouldn't come back."
Later Kyger moved to the East West House, where such writers as Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, and Jack Kerouac were occasional residents. In 1960 she moved to Japan, where she and Snyder were married on February 23. There were two ceremonies: one by the American consul and another at the Daitoku ji monastery in Kyoto. Her life with Snyder in Kyoto and later in India is the subject of The Japan and India Journals, 1960-1964 (1981). Following her divorce from Snyder in 1964 Kyger returned to the Bay Area. She has said about this time, "I just took off on this big energy cruise. I had lots to say to everybody, and it wasn't like playing second fiddle anymore." The following year Donald Allen published her first book, The Tapestry and the Web (1965).
In 1966 Kyger married the painter Jack Boyce, and together they travelled through Spain, France, Italy, and England. Upon their return Kyger and Boyce stayed briefly in New York, and then in 1967 returned to the San Francisco area where they spent the next year. In 1968 the two traveled to Bodega Bay, then to Bolinas in 1969, where Kyger continued to live (she and Boyce separated in 1970). In the 1970s Bolinas was known for being a center for wandering poets, as well as a home for Philip Whalen, Robert Creeley, Donald Allen, Tom Clark, and others. Kyger lived with artist Donald Guravich from 1978 until her death in 2017; they were married in 2013. She maintained an active presence in the community, and was particularly concerned with environmental issues. She continued to travel extensively, including several trips to Mexico, while continuing to publish her poetry. Kyger died March 22, 2017 in Bolinas, California.
Selected Bibliography: The Tapestry and the Web (1965), Joanne (1970), Places to Go (1970), Desecheo Notebook (1971), Trip Out and Fall Back (1974), All This Every Day (1975), The Wonderful Focus of You (1980), Up My Coast (1981), The Japan and India Journals 1960-64 (1981), Mexico Blonde (1981), Going On: Selected Poems 1958-80 (1983), Again: Poems 1989–2000 (2001), As Ever: Selected Poems (2002), The Distressed Look (2004), God Never Dies (2004), About Now: Collected Poems (2007), On Time: Poems 2005-2014 (2015), and There You Are: Interviews, Journals, and Ephemera (2017).
The Joanne Kyger Papers document Kyger's career as a poet and important member of the West Coast poetry community. Materials include correspondence with prominent poets, artists, and editors; manuscript and typescript drafts of Kyger's poetry; journals; photographs; and sound recordings of spoken word events.
Accession Processed in 2010
Arranged in eight series: 1) BIOGRAPHICAL, 2) CORRESPONDENCE, 3) WRITINGS, 4) WRITINGS OF OTHERS, 5) OTHER PROJECTS, 6) SUBJECT FILES, 7) IMAGES, and 8) SOUND RECORDINGS.
Accession Processed 2019-2021
Arranged in twelve series: 9) JOURNALS/DIARIES, 10) BIOGRAPHICAL, 11) CORRESPONDENCE, 12) WRITINGS, 13) WORKS BY OTHERS, 14) SUBJECT FILES, 15) PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES, 16) BOLINAS MATERIALS, 17) PHOTOGRAPHS AND NEGATIVES, 18) VIDEO AND FILM, 19) KYGER FAMILY PAPERS, and 20) DIGITAL FILES.